The General – A Train War movie

Having summer holidays at the moment, and I considered it would be a nice habit to blog about the stuff I manage to do around in this one month.. well, the ‘productive’ kind of stuff. Actually, anything that doesn’t include just mere surfing and chatting around would be considered productive. Even watching movies or shows and playing games.

As usual I was channel surfing, and I hit upon this movie called ‘The General’, which was based on a train. As I’m already kind of obsessed with trains, I left it running. A few minutes into it, and my mom and me began to quite enjoy the comedic act put together by the brave soldier, jumping in and out around the train, improvising with stuff to overcome hurdles and obstacles in the way thrown by the enemies, to venture into their land to save this kidnapped lady on their train (the enemy’s train). It was kind of a war being made over running trains, however with a pretty humorous approach to it, rather than violence (which I wouldn’t have watched otherwise).

I later google’d up to find it was a very old film from 1926. Well, the black and white scenes along with no vocals and usage of speech cards between the frames for showing conversation, did make it feel like it was pretty classic. I guess I just got to watch it mid-way through the film, however it was entertaining, and also a different experience as it wasn’t a usual current age colorful film with sound and visual effects and stuff. Maybe I’ll watch the entire movie on YouTube sometime to catch up on the beginning.

Storyline

Johnnie loves his train (“The General”) and Annabelle Lee. When the Civil War begins he is turned down for service because he’s more valuable as an engineer. Annabelle thinks it’s because he’s a coward. Union spies capture The General with Annabelle on board. Johnny must rescue both his loves.